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The fact that I’m a grand-uncle to an 18-month old makes me feel quite old! I’m really not that old, am I?!

As mentioned in my previous post, until a few years ago I didn’t think we’d be adopting, so I never expected that anybody would care about my experiences with children. I’d always thought that I’d just learn ‘on the job,’ so to speak. Anyway, on Mother’s day our family met at my sister’s house for Sunday lunch, so while everybody was finishing their meal and chatting, I excused myself and sat with my grand-niece while she played nearby.

At first I just watched her playing with a toy school bus and a stuffed dog. It was cute to see the attention she put in to carefully opening and closing the door of the bus each time she moved the stuffed dog on or off. The fact that the bus had no roof and the dog would have been way too big to fit though the door seemed to be of no consequence to her whatsoever.

Next she climbed inside her Little Tikes car. Rather than dashing about, she glanced around for a while, looking a little confused. I remembered seeing her in her car earlier; she had made a big play of turning the key before setting off. I wondered if she was looking for the key, so I helped her search. I found the key on a little chair at my feet. I called to her and showed her that I’d found it. She lent though the ‘windshield’ of her car, with her hand reaching out expectantly. I too lent over with my arm stretched and handed her the key. She sat back in the seat and pretended to turn the key in the ignition before setting off around the room.

By now the family was returning from the meal and sitting in the lounge. My grand-niece parked her car and toddled over to me with an In the Night Garden book. I asked her if she could point out the Tombliboos to me (which she did). When hand-stitched mum asked her if she would would like me to read to her, she shook her head and plonked the book down on the sofa.

I looked around and found one of those shape sorter plastic ball things – you know the ones – where you have you find the right shape to fit each hole. At first I was at a loss as to how to extract the shapes from the center of the ball; however, my nephew came to my aid and showed me how. Then my grand-niece picked up a shape and seemingly randomly tried to stuff it in to every hole.

To try and make it easier for her, I slowly rotated the ball, presented one side to her, and asked if she thought the shape would fit. After a short struggle, I’d announce that I didn’t think the block would fit and rotated the ball to show the next opening. When the shape finally popped though the correct hole, I gave a big cheer and a broad smile formed across her face. This cheering seemed to give her no end of encouragement and we hunted for the next match together.

By this time pretty much everybody in the room was watching. Much to her excitement, the next matches resulted in louder and louder cheers. Sadly however after a while, conversation had taken over in the room. As such when another block fell in to place, my grand-niece paused for the cheers, but none came. “Uh-oh,” I announced loudly, “didn’t anybody see what you did?!” A cheer arose from the room, a smile returned, a little body relaxed and the play continued.